


Eleven

by transdimensional_void



Series: I Know You Better Than You Fake It [5]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 90's Music, Alcoholism, Angst, Emetophobia, Goth!Dan, M/M, Nerd!phil, Panic Attacks, Sex, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 11:29:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7506523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transdimensional_void/pseuds/transdimensional_void
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nerd!Phil and Goth!Dan’s lazy day together gets interrupted. Title from "Jimmy" by Tool</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eleven

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to everyone who has been waiting patiently for this for so long. Part of the reason it took a while is because I added on to the plot and had to work out some of the changes. Thank you for reading!

Phil wrinkled his nose as the sharp chemical smell burned the inside of his nostrils.

 

“Eugh! That smells awful,” he grumbled and shrank back from where Daniel stood at the bathroom sink squeezing the contents of one bottle into another, larger one. “Is my hair going to smell like that?”

 

Daniel rolled his eyes as he tipped up the smaller bottle and set it down.

 

“Does my hair smell like that?” he scoffed.

 

“No,” Phil murmured, thinking about how nice it was to press his nose against Daniel’s scalp when he held him. He blushed. “I like the way your hair smells.”

 

“Well, there you go,” his boyfriend replied with a smug little smile curving his lips. “Now sit down and put the towel around your shoulders like I told you to.”

 

So Phil grabbed the old, stained towel Daniel had given him and wrapped it around his shoulders as he sat down on the toilet lid. A moment later Daniel turned toward him, hands encased in clear plastic gloves and a squeeze bottle full of the smelly hair dye clutched in the fingers of his left hand.

 

“You ready?” he asked, raising one thin, black brow.

 

Phil nodded, feeling his pulse fluttering in his neck. He wasn’t sure whether it was from nervousness or anticipation.

 

“Close your eyes, just in case,” Daniel ordered him, so he closed his eyes and then he felt Daniel’s plastic-encased fingers rubbing against his hair and smelled the hair dye scent even more strongly.

 

“Oh, crap, you’re actually doing it,” he squeaked out, squeezing his eyes shut even tighter. 

 

“Hey, it was your idea this time,” Daniel’s voice said from somewhere near his left ear, making him shiver a little at the unexpected closeness.

 

It was absolutely true that Phil had been the one to suggest this. And he was pretty sure he was ready for the change. It was just that now that there was no going back, he was starting to panic just a bit.

 

It was Thursday, and Phil, who was now on study leave, had dutifully stayed home and studied for the past three days. When Daniel had called his house on Wednesday evening and said he was off work the next day, Phil had asked his mum if it was okay to take some time off from studying. She’d made a sarcastic joke about how she wasn’t, in fact, his jailer, but she’d agreed that he deserved a little time off.

 

Unsurprisingly, Daniel had greeted him by yanking him through the front door and immediately pulling him into a long, breathless kiss. This was the longest they’d gone without seeing each other pretty much since they’d met, and Phil had to admit he was aching to touch the other boy again too.

 

They’d been two Depeche Mode songs into a make out session when Phil had pulled back and asked Daniel if they could try something different.

 

“Like what?” Daniel had breathed as he moved his lips back up to Phil’s neck.

 

“Erm, like, I want to have sex again, but this time…” he swallowed, nervous and embarrassed.

 

Daniel brushed his lips against Phil’s adam’s apple again before leaning back to look at him.

 

“This time?” he prompted, raising his eyebrows a little and smiling.

 

“Could we, erm, do it the other way around?” Phil muttered, his gaze dropping.

 

He was staring at Daniel’s bare collar bones, exposed by the low neck of his t-shirt, so he didn’t see the way all of the amusement melted right off his face.

 

“You want me to fuck you?” he heard Daniel ask in a raspy voice, and Phil glanced up to see that the other boy was staring at him fixedly.

 

“Yeah, if you, er, think you would like that…” he murmured.

 

“Holy fuck, are you kidding?” Daniel said before reaching down to pull Phil closer by his hips and attacking his lips with renewed vigor.

 

“Wait.” Daniel pulled back after a moment, his voice shaky from shortness of breath. “Have you ever fingered yourself or anything before? If you haven’t, it might not be such a good idea—“

 

“I have,” Phil said in a very small voice, nibbling at his lower lip and not meeting Daniel’s eyes again. “Erm, after you showed me how to do it to you the other day, I wanted to try it on myself to, like, practice, and…yeah, ahem, I’ve kind of been doing it a lot since then.”

 

He watched Daniel’s chest rise and fall as he took a few breaths.

 

“Fuck, that’s hot,” Daniel said at last and then reached for the drawer beside the bed to pull out the bottle of lube.

 

It had definitely felt different to have Daniel’s fingers inside him than it had felt when he’d done that to himself, but it was a very good sort of different. Having Daniel’s dick inside him was even more different, and it took a long time for him to get used to the feeling, but after a while that started feeling good too, and he’d ended up coming harder than he ever had before.

 

It had been later, when they’d been lying there holding each other and prattling on about nothing that he’d brought up the other thing he’d been wanting to try.

 

“So, you think I’d look good with black hair?” he’d asked as he lay against Daniel’s chest and felt the other boy’s fingers stroking through his hair.

 

“Definitely,” he’d replied at once.

 

“So, do you wanna dye my hair for me?” Phil had continued.

 

Daniel’s fingers had paused at the back of his head.

 

“Really? You mean, like, right now?”

 

“Yeah, if you’re up for it.”

 

“Are you kidding?” Daniel had repeated, and now here they were, one trip to the drug store later,with Phil sitting on the toilet in Daniel’s bathroom while the goth boy rubbed smelly chemicals into his hair.

 

“All done!” Daniel said, stepping back and tossing the mostly-empty bottle of dye in the trash. “Now we’ve got to let it sit for thirty minutes. I’ll go set my alarm. Just a second.”

 

When Daniel returned, he plopped down on the bathroom rug in front of Phil with his CD player and a CD in hand. Phil snorted and shook his head. Of course his music addict of a boyfriend couldn’t sit still for thirty minutes without something to listen to. The album turned out to be _Garbage_ by Garbage, but Daniel turned the volume down low and looked up at Phil as soon as the first song started.

 

“I told the band at practice yesterday,” he said, his tone casual but his eyes wide as they stayed fixed on Phil’s face.

 

Phil was resisting the urge to reach up and scratch his scalp where he could feel some of the dye trickling down, but he completely forgot about that at Daniel’s words.

 

“Did they take it okay?” he asked, something about the other boy’s gaze making him feel uncomfortable. There was a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes, and Phil had the fleeting thought that Daniel wanted to be talked out of his decision.

 

“No,” Daniel shrugged, breaking eye contact and leaning his head back against the bathroom wall. “But it doesn’t matter. It’s for the best, and they’ll see that eventually.”

 

Phil bit both of his lips. He couldn’t really see Daniel’s eyes anymore, so he wasn’t sure if the uncertainty was still there or not. And he didn’t know if Daniel was really right about it being for the best or not. He was worried that quitting the band might make Daniel unhappy, but at the end of the day, didn’t Daniel know better than anyone what would make him happy?

 

“When are they leaving for Manchester, then?” he asked finally.

 

Daniel’s eyes flitted to the side. He was wearing black eyeliner with a smudge of shocking red across each eyelid. It made the color of his eyes look even warmer and richer than usual.

 

“End of next week probably,” he said. “We’ve got a show this weekend, and they’ve been billing it as our final performance here. I’m guessing there’ll be a good turnout.”

 

“Can I come?” Phil blurted out.

 

Daniel tilted his chin down again, gazing up at Phil with raised eyebrows.

 

“Are you sure you want to? It’s probably going to be even crazier than normal.”

 

Phil took a deep breath and nodded. The idea of it was a bit terrifying, but this might be his last chance ever to see Daniel perform as a member of LSD.

 

“I can go with Tim or someone, right? I’ll be fine.” He did his best to sound sure of this. “And I really want to see you play,” he added.

 

The goth boy blinked at him for a moment and then shrugged.

 

“Okay, I’ll ask Tim if that’s okay with him.” He smirked and added, “He knows if he lets anything happen to you I’ll kill him.”

 

A short time later the alarm went off, and once he’d dashed to the other room to turn off the annoying sound, Daniel made his boyfriend kneel next to the bathtub and stick his head under the faucet while he ran his fingers through his hair to clear out all the dye. When the water began to run clear and Phil was finally allowed to sit upright again, he was nervous to see the way Daniel’s eyes grew round and his red-painted lips split into a grin.

 

“Your hair is so black,” he stated, reaching up to move a strand that clung to Phil’s forehead.

 

“I wanna see,” Phil said, turning to try to catch a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror, but Daniel’s hands darted out and grabbed his shoulders to stop him.

 

“Not yet! Wait until after I blow-dry it.”

 

Phil made an impatient sound, but he sat back and let Daniel dig out the hairdryer and some kind of spray and a comb, and he waited with minimal fidgeting while the other boy dried and fussed with his hair.

 

At last Daniel deemed his hair ready to view, and Phil stood and stared in front of the mirror at a black-haired boy he couldn't quite believe was him. He’d been spiking his hair up with gel for years now, but Daniel hadn’t put anything on it other than the spray stuff, so the short black strands lay soft and flat against his forehead. It made his skin look even paler. He’d always hated how pale he was, doing his best to tan despite the fact that his skin refused to produce anything other than freckles or sunburn, but now somehow he thought the paleness of his skin actually suited him. He grinned.

 

“You like it?” he heard from behind him.

 

He turned to see Daniel regarding him with a slight questioning tilt to his head. Phil leaned over and left a peck on his boyfriend’s cheek.

 

“Yep! You were right. Is that what you wanted to hear?” 

 

Daniel rolled his eyes and reached up to ruffle Phil’s hair with his fingers. 

 

“Of course I was right. Now let’s have some lunch. I’m hungry enough to start considering cannibalism.” 

 

They argued about what to eat for a few minutes before Phil finally won out, and they walked down to a nearby kebab stand instead of cooking. After lunch, they wandered around Daniel’s neighborhood for a while, staring at the bleak fronts of the tiny houses while their kebabs digested. They ended up heading back to Daniel’s house at last when he leaned over and whispered a few suggestions in his boyfriend’s ear that made it urgent that they be together back in Daniel’s bed immediately.

 

A couple of blowjobs and a long shared shower later, the two boys were sitting side by side on the floor at the end of Daniel’s bed holding hands and talking about the film course Phil was planning to study when a loud bang downstairs made them both go rigid.

 

Phil glanced over at Daniel and saw that all of the blood had drained out of his face. Downstairs, there was a series of loud but muffled thumps and then one very large THWACK! that Phil guessed was something falling.

 

“Fuck,” he heard Daniel whisper under his breath. A moment later, Daniel had wrenched his hand out of Phil’s and jumped to his feet. “Stay here,” he ordered before dashing out of the room.

 

It didn’t take a lot of thinking for Phil to guess what the noises were: Daniel’s dad had come home unexpectedly. Phil hugged his knees against his chest and leaned back against the bed, trying to quieten even his breathing. He heard voices downstairs then, Daniel’s voice slightly raised in questioning and then another, gruffer and less distinct voice responding.

 

Daniel was gone for roughly eight minutes. Phil counted them on his bedside clock. When he at last appeared at his doorway again, he was still unusually pale. He gripped the doorframe with white knuckles and stared wide-eyed down at Phil.

 

“You need to go home,” he stated, voice controlled and quiet.

 

“I don’t mind staying with you,” Phil murmured back, “if you need…company.”

 

Daniel shook his head sharply from side to side.

 

“I can handle him on my own.” Phil wasn’t sure how the words managed to squeeze out from between Daniel’s lips, tightly as he had them pressed together. “Thanks, though,” he added.

 

Phil licked his own lips and took in a deep breath. Maybe this was a terrible time to push, but maybe it was the perfect time to. Only one way to find out.

 

“I don’t think you should have to,” Phil said, keeping his voice very low. “It’s not good for you. He’s an adult. He can take care of himself.”

 

Daniel let out a bitter laugh.

 

“Not when he’s like this, he can’t,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Please, Phil—“

 

“Why don’t you call your mum and ask her to come take care of him then?” Phil forged on.

 

Daniel’s face snarled into an ugly expression.

 

“My mum would probably be happy to let him choke to death on his own sick.” He bit the words out, and the suppressed anger Phil sensed in them made his hair stand on end. “He’s my dad, Phil. I’m used to it.”

 

Phil straightened up his back and held Daniel’s gaze with his own.

 

“It’s not right,” he said. “Even if you can handle it, I don’t think you should have to. Look at you. You’re barely holding it together.”

 

He could see the way Daniel’s chest rose and fell in short, frenzied bursts and the way his arms were trembling as they supported his weight against the doorframe. He’d seen what had happened to Daniel at the party the other night. He’d also seen how long it had taken Daniel to recover afterward. When he thought about Daniel’s own father inflicting that on his son, he felt so angry he thought he might explode.

 

“If he needs taking care of, let me help,” Phil said, somehow managing to keep his tone even. “There’s no reason for you to make yourself ill over it.”

 

Daniel was already shaking his head.

 

“He’s not your family, Phil. You shouldn’t see him like that. No one should see him like that.”

 

Phil paused. Daniel did have a point. Phil was nothing at all to Daniel’s dad. His boyfriend took advantage of his momentary silence.

 

“I’ll walk you out,” he said, ripping his hands from the doorframe at last and taking a couple of steps toward Phil. “I’m sorry. It’s just—“

 

“I’m not going,” Phil said, crossing his arms and planting his feet. Daniel halted his progress across the room, brows drawing together, and Phil rushed to add, “If you don’t want me to see him, then I’ll stay up here. I’ll stay out of your way, I promise. Just… I don’t think you should be alone.”

 

Daniel’s mouth had twisted up, and he was breaking it open to object again when a clear shout of “Dan!” from downstairs interrupted him.

 

He screwed his eyes shut tight, chest swelling as he sucked in a long breath.

 

“Please go,” he pleaded one more time, voice soft.

 

Phil shook his head hard, even though he knew Daniel couldn’t see him.

 

“No.”

 

“Dan!” came the shout from downstairs again. “What’s taking so long?”

 

“Coming!” he barked over his shoulder. He tossed one more fierce look at Phil, shook his head, ran the fingers of both hands through his hair and then turned and stalked out the door.

 

As soon as he had gone, Phil sank to the floor, knees feeling strangely weak. Daniel was angry with him. He was _really_ angry with him. He could tell. He couldn’t explain what had suddenly made him feel so stubborn, but even now, he felt convinced that staying was the right thing to do. Even if Daniel ended up hating his guts for it.

 

He was gone for even longer this time. Phil sat there on the floor, huddled against the end of the bed, listening to the faint sounds from downstairs. There were voices again and the sounds of footsteps. About fifteen minutes after Daniel had left, the retching sounds began, and Phil leapt to his feet, on the verge of rushing downstairs. But then he remembered that he’d promised to stay out of Daniel’s way. All he could do was stand there, utterly helpless, fingernails digging into his palms while he waited for Daniel to reappear.

 

Daniel had been gone for nearly half an hour and there was complete silence downstairs when Phil finally decided that his promise wasn’t doing either of them any good.

 

He relaxed his hands from the aching fists he’d squeezed them into, took a deep breath and then walked through the door of the bedroom and out onto the landing. He could smell the sick even from here, and the reek of it almost made him gag. He held his nose and then started down the stairs, hurrying now that he’d decided to just do it.

 

When he reached the foot of the stairs, he paused for a moment, heartbeat clamoring in his ears. Daniel was really going to hate him now. But he still thought he was doing the right thing, so he stepped through the archway into the family room. 

 

There on the sofa was the body of a man, just as he’d imagined he might see the last time he was here. The man lay on his stomach with one arm dangling off the side of the sofa; he was facing out toward the room so that Phil could see his closed eyes and slack jaw. He was breathing loudly and heavily, or else Phil might have wondered if he was even alive. Beside the sofa, dangerously close to the man’s trailing fingers, was a red plastic bucket, and Phil realized that this was the source of the sickening smell filling the entire downstairs.

 

He glanced around, looking for Daniel, and then he saw him. He was hunkered down in the corner of the room farthest from the sofa, back curved away from Phil and face buried against his knees, his own breathing nearly as heavy as the man on the sofa’s.

 

Phil hesitated. It had been Ian, not him, who had known what to do the last time this had happened. Phil had soothed him and called his name, but Daniel hadn’t responded until Ian had come over.

 

Because Ian had taken care of the source of the problem first. Right.

 

Phil pinched his nose tighter and walked toward the sofa. Glancing at the bucket out of the corner of his eye, he bent down, grabbed it, and then held it out at arms’ length while he hurried as quickly as he dared to the downstairs toilet.

 

When the contents had been flushed, he rinsed the bucket in the bathtub and scrubbed it with dishwashing liquid from the kitchen until he was sure not a trace of the smell remained.

 

Back in the family room, he found that neither Daniel nor his father had moved an inch from where he’d left them. The smell still lingered slightly here, and Phil guessed Daniel’s dad had gotten some of it on himself. His nose wrinkled up involuntarily as he dropped the clean bucket beside the sofa again, but he forced his attention to the black-clad figure on the other side of the room. 

 

He squared up his shoulders and strode over, crouching down beside the hunched up body and reaching a hand out for it.

 

When his palm first made contact with the curve of Daniel’s back, there was no reaction. How long had he been curled up in this defensive posture, Phil wondered? Fifteen minutes or more by now…

 

“Daniel,” he murmured, moving his palm over the smooth surface of Daniel’s t-shirt. “Can you come upstairs with me?”

 

There was a faint sound in response, but then nothing. Phil tried again.

 

“Come upstairs,” he said, his tone firmer this time.

 

“No.” The word was distinct now.

 

“If you’re worried about your dad, I’ll come back down and watch him. Okay? You need to go upstairs now, though.”

 

“I can’t,” came a soft moan from somewhere in the vicinity of Daniel’s knees.

 

“Why not?” Phil kept his voice low and steady.

 

“Can’t move.”

 

“Yes, you can,” Phil stated. “I’ll help you.” He demonstrated by sliding both hands under Daniel’s nearest arm and applying a gentle upward pressure. “Keep your eyes closed. Just lean on me and I’ll take you.”

 

Daniel didn’t say anything to this, but he also didn’t say “no” again, so Phil wrapped his fingers around the other boy’s arm and tugged upward a little bit. The arm stopped resisting him and allowed itself to be lifted. As he pulled, he stood, and the rest of Daniel’s body rose along with his arm. His face turned immediately into Phil’s chest so that Phil just caught a glimpse of red, puffy eyelids and wet cheeks before Daniel’s face was buried in his shirt. He put his arm around the shuddering shoulders and held on tight as he walked them both past the man on the sofa, through the archway and to the bottom of the stairs.

 

“We’re going up the stairs now,” he said before propelling them both forward and up the carpeted steps. They took it slow since Daniel couldn’t see where his feet were going, but eventually, Phil got him into his room and sat him down on his bed. He tried to let go of the other boy’s shoulders then so he could head downstairs again, but Daniel clung tightly, pressing his face even deeper into the space between Phil’s arm and his chest.

 

So Phil sat down beside him, and then they both lay down with Phil’s arms tight around Daniel, who was still shaking and breathing heavily.

 

They’d been lying there for several minutes when noises from downstairs signaled that Daniel’s father might be waking up. Phil felt Daniel’s whole body go rigid at once and heard his breathing stop for a moment.

 

“I’ll go check on him,” Phil said, squeezing Daniel tighter for a moment and making as if to leave. Daniel just clung to him even harder.

 

Downstairs, they could clearly hear the sound of the plastic bucket being knocked over and then picked up again. It occurred to Phil how easily he’d been able to hear everything that was happening downstairs earlier. If Daniel’s dad started retching again…

 

“Hey, what do you want to listen to while I’m gone?” Phil asked, keeping his tone as light as possible. “Spice Girls? Hanson?”

 

He was rewarded with a shaky laugh.

 

“Savage Garden, of course,” Daniel muttered, and Phil felt the fingers gripping the back of his shirt loosen their hold.

 

“I don’t think I brought my Savage Garden collection with me, but I might have some Madonna,” Phil called over his shoulder as he stood and made his way over to Daniel’s CD player.

 

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Daniel hissed behind him as he crouched down next to the crate of CDs and pulled out the first one his fingers touched. It was Tool, the same album Daniel had played for Phil on the first day they’d met. He smiled to himself as he slipped the CD in and turned it up loud enough to drown out everything that was happening downstairs.

 

He stood upright again, casting a glance toward the bed, where Daniel lay staring up at him with wide eyes.

 

“I’ll be right back.”

 

Daniel shook his head, but he didn’t say anything. So Phil turned his back and left.

 

He paused again at the bottom of the stairs. He could hear now that the family room had gone silent again. The only sound was the faint din of distortion guitar drifting down the stairs from Daniel’s room.

 

His fingers tightened for a moment on the bannister before he let go and walked toward the family room.

 

When he stepped through the archway, Daniel’s father looked up from where he was sat on the sofa. He was a slightly-overweight middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair cropped close to his skull. Phil could see he was starting to go bald in front. His brown eyes were bloodshot and the skin of his face had a slight greyish undertone. He had the red bucket sat on the carpet in between his feet, and his elbows were propped on his knees and his palms outstretched as though they had just been supporting his face.

 

“You must be the boyfriend Dan’s told me about,” the man rasped. His voice sounded like he’d just had a load of gravel poured down his throat. He was speaking slowly, but his words were surprisingly clear. If Phil hadn’t already known, he wouldn’t have guessed this man was drunk.

 

Phil blinked. Daniel had told his dad about him?

 

“Um, yeah,” Phil said, hunching up his shoulders a bit under the man’s gaze. Daniel’s dad looked like death warmed-over and he still smelled distinctly of sick, yet Phil felt somehow at a disadvantage. Maybe it was because he knew next to nothing about this man. “I’m Phil,” he added.

 

“Nice to meet you, Phil,” the man said. “You’ve got a great poker face, but it’s not hard to guess that you must hate me.”

 

Phil blinked again.

 

“I don’t—“

 

“It’s okay,” said Daniel’s father, dropping his face against his hands again. “I deserve it.” He ran his hands over his face a few times, perhaps attempting to rub some life back into his cheeks. Phil tried to think of something to say, and failed. “Where’s Dan?” the man said, looking up at Phil again.

 

“Upstairs,” Phil said at once. “I told him I’d come check on you.”

 

“I’m still alive,” the man replied with a rough laugh. “Somehow.”

 

Phil nodded. Daniel’s father was still sitting there, looking at him. He thought it would be rude to leave without saying something else, but he found he’d run completely out of conversation topics.

 

“You don’t look like one of his usual people,” Daniel’s father said then. “You aren’t into all his crazy music and stuff, are you?”

 

Phil shook his head.

 

“Didn’t think so,” Daniel’s father replied, nodding to himself. “How’d you two meet then? The record store?”

 

“Um, well, kind of,” Phil said, shoving both hands in his pockets to give them something to do. “We actually met on the pavement outside.” He had no idea why he was telling this man the truth, but it somehow felt like an okay thing to do. “He saved me from some guy that was about to thrash me.”

 

Daniel’s father raised his eyebrows then and leaned back against the sofa with a loud thump, the first real indication Phil had seen that he was still too drunk to be fully in control of himself.

 

“You look like the kind of kid who gets thrashed sometimes,” Daniel’s father observed.

 

Phil shrugged.

 

“Not as often as you’d think,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Um, can I get you a glass of water or something, Mr. Howell?”

 

“Sure,” he replied, tipping his head over the back of the sofa and closing his eyes. “I’d be much obliged.”

 

So Phil walked over to the kitchen and poured a glass of water from the pitcher in the fridge and then brought it back into the family room and held it out to his boyfriend’s father.

 

“Very polite kid, you are,” said Daniel’s father when he’d opened his eyes and taken the glass from Phil’s hand. “Too good for the likes of me… It’s Dan’s birthday next Wednesday, you know.”

 

Phil shook his head. He hadn’t known.

 

“And I haven’t even got 50p to go down to the shops and buy him a nice card,” Mr. Howell continued. “Fat lot of use I am as a father. Bet he wishes he had a rich dad who would throw a big party for all his friends and buy him a Ferrari.”

 

Phil frowned. He highly doubted Daniel would be interested in either of those things.

 

“I don’t suppose you’re some rich kid who can take him on a Mediterranean cruise or something for his birthday?”

 

“No, Sir,” Phil said, wondering if Daniel’s father was ever going to drink the water he’d brought. He still held it in his hand. The sweat from the outside of the glass was dripping down to form a tiny puddle on the vinyl of the sofa.

 

“Too bad,” Daniel’s father said, looking down at the glass in his hand as though he had just discovered it was there. He raised it gingerly to his lips and took a long sip. “Mr. Richard Simpson takes people on Mediterranean cruises,” he said then.

 

Phil wrinkled his brow. Who?

 

“Her boss,” Mr. Howell explained, seeing Phil’s confused expression. He took another swig from the glass, and when he saw that Phil was still lost, he added, “Dan’s mum.”

 

“Oh,” Phil said. He was still rather lost.

 

“You think _you_ hate me,” Daniel’s father said with a bitter laugh. “You ain’t got nothing on her…my beautiful wife.”

 

Phil was really starting to wish he could leave now. It was clear Mr. Howell wasn’t in any immediate danger, and Phil had no idea if there was some ultimate point in everything he was saying or if Phil had just turned into some sort of confessor for this man.

 

“She’ll be _very_ glad once she’s finally rid of me,” he said, laughing again. “They’ll probably both be glad.”

 

“I should go check on Daniel,” Phil interrupted then. He’d heard enough—more than enough. “Do you need anything else, Mr. Howell?”

 

The blood-shot eyes turned back toward Phil from where they’d wandered off to the side.

 

“No, kid,” Daniel’s father scraped out. “No, I don’t need anything else.”

 

He was still staring at Phil, perhaps studying him, perhaps just too out of it to realize he was staring.

 

“Okay, if you need something, just call,” Phil muttered. “Um, bye.”

 

When he turned and hurried out of the room, he could still feel eyes on his back.

 

Upstairs, he found Daniel sitting up now, legs slung over one side of the bed as though he were on the verge of standing up. There was a cigarette stubbed out in the ash tray beside the bed, and a faint haze of smoke still hung in the air. He looked up as Phil stepped into the room, and Phil couldn’t help being struck with a sense of déjà vu. Twenty years ago or so Daniel’s father’s eyes may have looked just like that, wide and bright and afraid.

 

“I’m sorry, Phil,” Daniel said before he’d taken more than two steps toward the bed. “I’m really sorry you had to see all this.” His voice was shaking. Phil thought he looked terrified. The CD was still playing loudly in the background.

 

“He’s fine,” Phil tried to reassure him, walking over to kneel on the carpet in front of him and place his hands on Daniel’s jean-covered knees. “He was awake. I gave him some water, and we talked a little.”

 

His words only seemed to make things worse, though, for as he looked up into Daniel’s face, blotchy from his crying, he saw all of the color drain from his cheeks for the second time that day.

 

“What did he say?” he whispered, his voice breaking a bit.

 

Phil sucked both lips in between his teeth. It would be easy to lie and just say “nothing much.” Was that the answer Daniel wanted to hear?

 

“He said you told him about me,” he started. He followed this with a small smile. “I was kinda surprised…but happy.”

 

Daniel nodded his head a little.

 

“I try to tell him everything. Well, the important stuff at least.” His shoulders hitched up and down in a jerky shrug. “I never know what he’s going to remember, though.”

 

“He told me about your birthday next week,” Phil ventured, hoping to draw Daniel’s thoughts towards nicer things. The CD suddenly switched over from a quieter song to one that was loud with electric bass and guitar, making Phil jump a little.

 

“Yeah, he always remembers my birthday,” Daniel mumbled. “I wish he wouldn’t.”

 

Phil tried to suppress a frown of confusion but apparently wasn’t very successful.

 

“I know it sounds weird,” Daniel said. “It’s just…he just gets so upset about it.” He shrugged again, a dismissive gesture. “I haven’t really celebrated my birthday for a while now. I don’t really want to, either. So if you were thinking about getting something for me, don’t.”

 

All kinds of questions blossomed inside Phil, but he held them in. The sketchy outlines of Daniel’s life were starting to come into focus in Phil’s mind, but he knew he was still too fragile to answer any questions about it all right now. Instead, he changed the topic again.

 

“Do you want me to stay over tonight?”

 

Daniel’s eyes flared wide, and he shook his head vigorously back and forth. The reaction was so immediate Phil knew he hadn’t taken any time to think about it.

 

“I really wouldn’t mind,” he pressed. “In fact, I’d be happy to.”

 

“No,” Daniel said. He looked ready to shatter at any moment, but the single word sounded very final. Phil thought for a moment.

 

“Do you want to come over to mine instead then?”

 

He seemed to take longer to answer that one, and, emboldened, Phil reached up and took both of Daniel’s hands in his own, gently chafing the skin of them with his fingertips.

 

At long last, though, Daniel shook his head.

 

“I should stay here just in case.”

 

The stubborn thing welled up inside Phil again, and it was on the tip of his tongue to tell Daniel that in that case he would be staying after all. Before he could speak, though, Daniel pulled his hands free and started to stand, forcing Phil to scoot back and out of his way.

 

“I should go check on him.”

 

He wasn’t gone as long this time, according to the clock, but it still felt like ages to Phil because he couldn’t hear what was going on. Whatever Daniel and his father were saying or doing downstairs was completely drowned out by the next track on the album, which sounded like something recorded in a factory in hell and included the band’s lead singer dramatically reading giving a speech in German.

 

Maybe it was none of his business what was happening downstairs.

 

Maybe Daniel was right, and the best thing for him to do would just be to leave and let the family have their privacy.

 

He tried to put himself in Daniel’s shoes and imagine what he would want if their roles were switched. If that was his dad or his mum downstairs, clearly unwell in a way that went far beyond the physical, would he want Daniel to see that? Not really, no. But Phil thought that if he were in Daniel’s place, he could at least admit that he couldn’t do everything by himself. Or at least he hoped he would be able to admit that. …But what did Phil really think he could do? Daniel had managed to care of his dad all on his own for who knew how long now. And the thing was, Phil was going away in a few months. And when he was gone, wouldn’t Daniel have to keep managing to do this on his own just as he always had?

 

“He’s going to sleep now.” Daniel’s shaky voice interrupted his thoughts, and he looked up to see Daniel leaning against the doorframe again. He looked paler than he had a minute ago, with reddish blotches mottling his skin.

 

“You can go now,” Daniel said.

 

Phil chewed his lip.

 

There really wasn’t anything else to say. If Daniel didn’t want his help, he couldn’t force it on him.

 

He stood up and walked over to where Daniel stood. He paused, staring at the boy he was so in love with — a boy who looked like he might fracture and disintegrate if Phil so much as tried to touch him. In the room behind him, the CD switched over to the next track, something low and thin and painful-sounding.

 

He held his arms open, and Daniel stepped into them, resting his forehead against Phil’s shoulder. Phil closed his arms around the slender back and squeezed as gently as he dared. He could feel and hear that Daniel’s breathing was too shallow and quick. So he held on and breathed with him for a minute, slowly in and slowly out.

 

“I know you think you should stay,” came Daniel’s voice suddenly as he spoke into Phil’s shoulder. “But I need you to go. Okay?”

 

Phil nodded. Daniel couldn’t see him nodding, but he knew he would feel it.

 

“Can I come by and see you tomorrow?” Phil asked.

 

There was a pause and then, “Yeah.”

 

When they started to pull apart, Daniel reached up and pulled Phil’s face down to his own, holding their lips together for a brief kiss.

 

As they passed by the archway that led into the family room on their way to the front door, Phil noticed that Daniel’s father and the red bucket had both disappeared. The family room was back to looking as unremarkable as any other family room he’d ever been in.

 

He was already stepping off the front steps and onto the path when he heard Daniel call his name from the doorway.

 

“Yeah?” he said, turning to see his boyfriend’s pale face framed by the dark doorway. It was already close to evening, though out here the day was still bright with low-angled sunbeams.

 

“Your hair looks really good like that,” the goth boy told him with the faintest ghost of his usual smirk floating about the edges of his mouth.

 

Phil ducked his head to hide a shy grin.

 

“Thanks,” he mumbled.

 

When he looked up again Daniel was gone.


End file.
